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Lecture 2Lecture 2

The scope of pragmatics

Background

The term pragmatics stems from the philospher Charles Morris (1938), who was actually interested in semiotics (or semiotic). Morris distinguished three branches of study within semiotics:

syntactics (or syntax), the study of the formal relation of signs to one another”,

semantics, the study of the relations of signs to the objects to which signs are applicable”, and

pragmatics, the study of the relation of signs to interpreters” (1938:6).

background

According to Morris (1971:24), each branch of semiotics can be further divided into pure studies and descriptive studies. The former was concerned with the elaboration of the relevant metalanguage and the latter applied the metalanguage to the description of specific signs and their usages.

background

With his particular behavioristic theory of semiotics, Morris defined the scope of pragmatics as follows: 

It is a sufficiently accurate characterization of pragmatics to say that it deals with the biotic aspects of semiosis, that is, with all the psychological, biological, and sociological phenomena which occur in the functioning of signs.(Morris,1938:108)

background

Levinson(1983:2) holds that this scope of pragmatics is very much wider than the work that currently goes on under the rubric of linguistic pragmatics, for it would include what is now known as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, neurolinguistics and much besides. The term pragmatics have long been used in two different ways. On the one hand, the broad use intended by Morris has been retain, dealing mainly with matters as diverse as the psychopathology of communication and the evolution of symbol systems.

background

On the other hand, and especially within analytical philosophy, the term pragmatics was subject to a successive narrowing of scope.

If in an investigation explicit reference is made to the speaker, or to put it in more general terms, to the user of the language, then we assign it [the investigation] to the field of pragmatics...If we abstract from the user of the language and analyze only the expressions and their designata, we are in the field of semantics. And, finally, if we abstract from the designata also and analyze only the relations between the expressions, we are in (logical) syntax.

background

The idea that pragmatics was the study of aspects of language that required reference to the users of the language then led to a very natural, further restriction of the term in analytical philosophy. For there is one aspect of natural languages that indubitably requires such reference, namely the study of deitic or indexical words like the pronouns I and you.

background

For example, I am Zhang Xiao, Zhang Xiao is a girl, therefore I

am a girl. If the first two premises are true and the speaker of

the conclusion is the same speaker as the speaker of the first premise, then we say the statement is necessarily true. Bar-Hillel (1954) therefore took the view that pragmatics is the study of languages, both natural and artificial, that contain indexical or deictic terms.

background

In the late 1960s, an implicit version of Carnap’s definition--- investigations requiring reference to the users of a language---was adopted within linguistics. At the same time, there was a keen interst shown by linguists in philosopher’s attempts to grapple with problems of meaning, sometimes from the point of view of the users of the language’. During this period, the scope of pragmatics was implicitly restricted.

background

Levinson (1983) considers a set of possible definition of pragmatics. One possible definition goes as follows: Pragmatics is the study of those principles that will account for why a certain set of sentences are anomalous, or not possible utterances. (Levinson, 1983:6) e.g.

(1) ??Come there please! (2) ??Aristotle was Greek, but I don’t believe it

background

(3) ??John’s children are hippies, and he has no children

(4) ??I order you not to obey this order (5) ??I hereby sing (6) ??As everyone knows, the earth please

revolves around the sun

Background

The explanation of these anomalies might be provided by pointing out that there are no, or at least no ordinary, contexts in which they could be appropriately used. Although an approach of this sort may be quite a good way to illustrate the kind of principles that pragmatics is concerned with, it will hardly do as an explicit definition of the field, because the set of pragmatic anomalies are presupposed, rather than explained. One can possibly imagine contexts in which the alleged anomalies are quite usable. This problem will recur when we consider the concept of appropriateness of an utterance.

Background

Another kind of definition would be that pragmatics is the study of language from a functional perspective, that is, that it explains facets of linguistic structure by reference to non-linguistic pressures and causes. But such a definition would fail to distinguish linguistic pragmatics from many other disciplines interested in functional approaches to language, including psycholinguistics and sociolinguitstics. Such a definition confuses the motives for studying pragmatics with the goals or general shape of a theory.

Background

One quite restricted scope for pragmatics that has been proposed is that pragmatics should be concerned solely with the description of linguistic structure. Or, to use Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance, pragmatics is concerned solely with performance principles of language use. Thus Katz & Fodor (1963) suggested that a theory of pragmatics would essentially be concerned with the disambiguation of sentences by the contexts in which they were uttered.

Background

One could claim that grammar is concerned with the context-free assignment of meaning to linguistic forms, while pragmatics is concerned with the further interpretation of those forms in context, as Katz (1977:19) notes: 

[Grammars] are theories about the structure of sentence types... Pragmatics theories, in contrast, do nothing to explicate the structure of linguistic constructions or grammatical properties and relations... They explicate the reasoning of speakers and hearers in working out the correlation in a context of a sentence taken with a proposition. In this respect, a pragmatic theory is part of performance.

Background

It seems that the term pragmatics covers both context-dependent aspects of language structure and principles of language usage and understanding that have nothing or little to do with linguistic structure. But this should not be taken to imply that pragmatics is concerned with quite disparate and unrelated aspects of language; rather pragmatists are specifically interested in the inter-relation of language structure and principles of language usage.

Background

If we have a definition that is specifically aimed at capturing the concern of pragmatists with features of language structure. It might go as follows:

Pragmatics is the study of those relations between language and context that are grammaticalized, or encoded in the structure of a language.

Background

Levinson (1983) gives some other definitions of the field: Pragmatics is the study of all those aspects of meaning not

captured in a semantic theory. Pragmatics is the study of the relations between language and

context that basic to an account of language understanding. Pragmatics is the study of the ability of language users to pair

sentences with the contexts in which they would appropriate. Pragmatics is the study of the deixis, implicature,

presupposition, speech acts, and aspects of discourse structure.

the role of pragmatics

The need for a pragmatic component in an integrated theory of linguistic ability can be argued for in various ways. One way is to consider the relation of the pragmatics-semantics-syntax trichotomy to the competence-performance dichotomy proposed by Chomsky. In Chomsky’s view, grammars are models of competence, where competence is knowledge of a language idealized away from irregularity or error and variation; to this, Katz influentially added idealization away from context.

the role of pragmatics

On such a view, insofar as pragmatics is concerned with context, it can be claimed that by definition pragmatics is not part of competence and thus not within the scope of grammatical descriptions. But suppose now we require that adequate grammatical descriptions include specifications of the meaning of every word in a language, and such a requirement has normally been assumed, then we find words whose meaning-specifications can only be given by reference to contexts of usage.

the role of pragmatics

For example, the meaning of words like well, oh and anyway in English cannot be explicated simply by statements of context-independent content; rather one has to refer to pragmatic concepts like relevance, implicature, or discourse structure. So either grammars must make reference to pragmatic information, or they cannot include full lexical description of a language.

Current interests in Pragmatics

Pragmatic principles of language usage can be shown systematically to ‘read in’ to utterances more than they conventionally or literally mean. Such regularly superimposed implications can then become quite hard to disentangle from sentence or literal meaning; in order to put them apart, the theorist has to construct or observe contexts in which the usual pragmatic implications do not hold.

Current interests in Pragmatics

For example, it seems perfectly natural to claim that the quantifier some in the following means ‘some and not all’:

Some ten cent pieces are rejected by this vending machine.

But suppose I am trying to use the machine, and I try coin after coin unsuccessfully, and I utter the above sentence; I might then very well communicate:

Some, and perhaps all, ten cent pieces are rejected by this vending machine.

Current interests in Pragmatics

Pragmatists also realized that there is a very substantial gap between current linguistic theories of language and accounts of linguistic communication. When linguists talk of the goal of linguistic theory as being the construction of an account of a sound-meaning correspondence for the infinite set of sentences in any language, one might perhaps infer that such a theory would give an account of at least the essential of how we communicate using language.

Current interests in Pragmatics

There is a substantial gap between a semantic theory and a complete theory of linguistic communication. Where are we to account for the hints, implicit purposes, assumptions, social attitudes and so on that are effectively communicated by the use of language? For example, in the following extracts from recorded conversations, the responses to an utterance indicate that for participants the utterance carried the implications indicated in brackets:

Current interests in Pragmatics

(1) A: I could eat the whole of that cake [implication: I compliment you on the cake]

B: Oh thanks (2) A: Do you have coffee to go? [Implication: Sell me coffee to go

if you can] B: Cream and sugar? (3) A: Hi John B: How’re you doing? A: Say, what’re you doing [Implication: I’ve got a suggestion

about what we might do together] B: Well, we’re going out. Why? A: Oh I was just going to say come out ...

Understanding and Using Language

P: What’s your name by the way S: Stephen P: You haven’t asked my name back S: What’s your name P: It’s Pat

Understanding and Using Language

Appropriacy I think you could go in now you know Are we all here Non-literal or indirect meaning Right, shall we begin Inference I’m a man. (a woman colleague says) Female toilet on floor above (a sign on the door of the

gentlemen’s toilet)

Understanding and Using Language

Indeterminacy (utterances are underdetermined) I’m a man I really like your new haircut Are you here Peter Context I’m tired (say at night or in the morning) Relevance I suppose today it’s especially important to be thinking

carefully about what our students say to us

Understanding and Using Language

Misfires (misfires are important because they tell us that there are expected norms for talk by showing us the effect when the norm is not achieved.)

–– Will you have some more chocolate –– I didn’t even have any to begin with

Pragmatics in China

胡壮麟《国外语言学》 1980 年第 3 期 何自然《语用学概论》 1988 年 何兆熊《语用学概要》 1989 年 徐盛桓“新格莱斯会话含意理论” 顾曰国“礼貌原则”

Pragmatics in China

外语教学的语用学研究 翻译研究 面向汉语语法的语用学研究 英汉对比研究 跨文化交际研究 1989 年全国首届语用学研讨会

Pragmatics in the World

Relevance theory (1986) 认知语用

End of Lecture